I’m sending you a copy of an SI “internal document”[1] – which doesn’t mean secret, obviously. I think that reading it will be interesting to the [other Italian] comrades (Perniola[2] already knows it).
What’s at issue is the beginning of a discussion about organization, which must contain other contributions. But in April and during the following month,[3] the revolution interrupted and surpassed that moment of theoretic-practical specification.
In the fall, the comrades of the SI believed that the positions of the text were confirmed by that event, and by our own actions at the time. It is thus on this basis that we have just agreed on the foundation of the “American section,” and it is on such conclusions (tactical autonomy of the effective local groups) that we have spoken with you.
It must be noted that this text was adopted with the following specifications added to point 12: “the practical autonomy of the national groups cannot go against our international solidarity concerning general theory and our practical basis (particularly [the requirement that] those who have been excluded or the people with whom one of our groups have broken must be immediately rejected in all countries).” Which seems obvious, in any case.”
We have briefly met the two other friends of your group,[4] with Paolo.[5]
Best wishes,P.S. I specify that, in point 11, the “autonomous groups” of which I speak are revolutionary groups that are outside the SI, in France and elsewhere, but who have adopted the basis of the “Minimum Definition.”[6]
[1] “The Question of Organization for the SI,” which would eventually be published in Internationale Situationniste #12 September 1969.
[2] Mario Perniola, the author of “Arte e Rivoluzione,” favorable to the SI, was published in December 1966 in the Italian journal Tempo presente; [and, years later,] faculty advisor for the future Italian biographer of Guy Debord, Anselm Jappe.
[3] May 1968.
[4] Cristina Sensenhauser and Puni Cesoni.
[5] Paolo Salvadori, a member of the Italian section of the SI.
[6] See letter to Mustapha Khayati dated 1 August 1966.
(Published in Guy Debord Correspondance, Vol "4": Janvier 1969 - december 1972 by Librairie Artheme Fayard, 2004. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! March 2012. Footnotes by the publisher.)